At the Careers in Culinary Arts cook-off, held in the Institute for Culinary Education in Manhattan, three students from Port Richmond High School – Antonio Meyers, Paola Lara and Abdallah Farraj – show off their finished dishes. Contestants had two hours to prepare from memory a French meal – Supreme Poulet Chasseur avec Pommes Chateau (Hunter’s Chicken with Turned, Sautéed Potatoes) and Crepes Sucrées with Crème Pastissière and Sauce au Chocolat (Dessert Crepes with Pastry Cream and Chocolate Sauce).
Photos Courtesy of C-Cap

STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. - PORT RICHMOND - Three culinary arts students at Port Richmond High School have succeeded in turning flour into gold by earning close to $60,000 in scholarship money awarded through the Careers through Culinary Arts Program (C-CAP).

Senior Antonio Meyers won a full four-year scholarship to Monroe College School of Hospitality Management and the Culinary Arts, in New Rochelle, N.Y., worth more than $49,000. His classmates, seniors Abdallah Farraj and Paola Lara, won C-CAP scholarships of $3,000 each that they will apply to study at Monroe.

Scholarship winners were announced during an awards ceremony in the elegant Pierre Hotel, Manhattan, where 24 of the city's top high-school chefs were honored for their achievements in the competition's citywide finals.

The competition itself took place last month in Manhattan at the Institute of Culinary Education. Students faced-off in a two-hour time limit to prepare from memory a two-course French meal – Supreme Poulet Chasseur avec Pommes Chateau (Hunter's Chicken with Turned, Sautéed Potatoes) and Crepes Sucrées with Crème Pastissière and Sauce au Chocolat (Dessert Crepes with Pastry Cream and Chocolate Sauce) – suitable for a five-star restaurant.

The students were judged on the presentation of the dishes, knife skills, techniques in the kitchen, taste, sanitary food handling and timeliness, by a panel of professionals working in the industry, among them celebrity chef Sara Moulton, and C-CAP founder and chairman Richard Grausman, whose recipes the students worked from.

Grausman, a James Beard Foundation Humanitarian of the Year award-winner, launched the C-CAP program in 1990 in 12 New York City schools, with the goal of motivating students toward careers in food service. Since then, the program has spread across the country. More than $10 million in culinary scholarships has been awarded to high-school students around the country. HONOREES

Meyers, 18, of Mariners Harbor, became interested in the culinary arts as an eighth-grader. "When I was looking at high schools I saw that Port Richmond had the culinary arts program, so I applied and enrolled," he explained. He plans to pursue his degree in culinary arts and business at Monroe College and hopes one day to own a chain of restaurants.

Miss Lara, of Westerleigh, and Farraj, of Mariners Harbor, both won scholarships to Monroe College in a March competition, where Farraj was judged "Best High School Chef" and Miss Lara finished in second place as "America's Best High School Pastry Chef" during a cook-off sponsored by the college. All three students have been in Port Richmond's Careers in Culinary Arts program for at least two years.

Miss Lara, 17, started working special events as a freshman because she has an older sister who was in the C-CAP program and is attending Monroe College on a scholarship.

"Paola has been to almost every special event that we do, including the St. George Theatre's Gala and the Richmond Chili Competition," reported James Ryan, coordinator of the culinary arts program at Port Richmond.

"Since I was a young girl, I have always loved to bake with my mother and grandmother, and getting into Port Richmond's Culinary Arts program made me realize this is what I want to do," she said. She plans on attending Monroe College in the fall to earn an associate degree in baking and pastry arts, and go on for a bachelor's degree in hospitality and management. She hopes one day to own a specialty cake shop.

Farraj, 18, joined the culinary program a year ago as a junior, "and since then he has been working very hard in culinary," Ryan said. He completed C-CAP job-training and a Culinary Boot Camp Program at Monroe over the summer that led to an internship at Thomas Keller's Bouchon Bakery in Manhattan, where he still works part-time. The teen said that while he's been interested in the culinary arts since he was a youngster, the program at Port Richmond opened his eyes to career possibilities in the field. He hopes to become a professional chef and one day own and manage a restaurant.

"All my students worked very hard to prepare for the competition and although I was confident that they would do well, the competition was very strong in both culinary and pastry," said Ryan, who accompanied them to the C-CAP competition.